To help cosmologists with their chalkboard equations, they have assigned the letter 'w' when working with dark energy - a way to mathematically depict the ratio of pressure and density of dark energy. The only problem, however, is they're not exactly sure what value to give it. But what they do know is that if they give w a value less than -1, their calculations reveal that dark energy will eventually grow to infinity - a regrettable turn of events that will cause everything in the universe to fly apart from each other - including tiny particles and any other building block of the Universe.

YAY! Unit-less numbers and pointless articles telling us nothing! How about a little more freakin' insight as t what dark matter or dark energy is fist, THEN we post pointless speculation as to what happens after humanity. Adjusting the estimated time frame for something we understand so little about we don't even have a proper name for it doesn't actually count as informative.

Besides, you can rip the universe apart much sooner than that by building a really big speaker on Africa, turning the moon into a column of ionized gases the diameter of the speaker, pointing the column at the sun, and plying the sun with non-stop boy band music. It will get so agitated that rather than nova or even supernova, it will collapse in on itself beyond gravity's limitations with a black hole and become a rift in space time itself which will spread faster than instantaneously to all corners of the sheet because I say so and that will be the end of that.

The Milky Way will be torn apart 32.9 million years before the big rip. The Earth will be ripped away from the Sun two months before the end, and we'll lose our moon with five days left. The Sun itself will be destroyed 28 minutes before the end of time, and the Earth will explode a mere 12 minutes later.

dready zim:The Milky Way will be torn apart 32.9 million years before the big rip. The Earth will be ripped away from the Sun two months before the end, and we'll lose our moon with five days left. The Sun itself will be destroyed 28 minutes before the end of time, and the Earth will explode a mere 12 minutes later.

I would think that at some point in the vast expanses between superclusters grows so large that our current universe could fit inside it, the force would be great enough to overcome the attractive forces between the matter/antimatter pairs that spring into existence, and new big bangs take place. They are unable to observe anything of the pre-existing universe because the quark-gluon plasma phase of the new big bang is opaque to all light and radiation. Our universe is probably much bigger and much older than we could imagine and our big bang is just one of many that happen recursively all over the universe.

/I offer no evidence to support this. It merely amuses me to believe that our existence isn't finite.

meanmutton:Marcus Aurelius: Nabb1: Hmm... Good question, but at this point I would remind everyone that our solar system lost a planet under Dubya.

You'll never hear THAT reported on FOX News, that's for sure.

Pluto Not Even Biggest 'Dwarf Planet' Any More, Thanks For Nothing W

The whole Pluto thing STILL bothers me... I still don't understand how you retroactively set standards when they already exist. If they had set the minimum standards AT Pluto, that would make sense. I guess that's what happens when a rocket scientist like Dubya is in charge of things. ;-)